A Year in Writing

One of my New Years resolutions was to keep a Journal. This will sometimes be about my day, or a piece of fiction or a poem I wrote that day. Whatever keeps me writing every day

[afistfulofwords]

14.01.2015

I am not at all prepared, for what comes next. Whatever it might be.

[afistfulofwords]

13.01.2015 - story extract

In the night the snow fell soft and slow. It hung almost completely still in the winter air, as if gravity was just a myth, a conspiracy. In the weightless snowflakes before the black night, he saw a mirror of the stars hanging between the vast emptiness of space. They too seemed still, allthough they were forever suspended in movement. With the stars so close to him, and so cold on his skin, Alexander forgot how to breath. For a moment he was sure, that if only he wanted it enough, his feet would leave the ground. He too, would become weightless and float with the snow. If only he wanted it enough, gravity would let him go and live among the stars. So he dared not to move and find out about the nature of his chains.

[afistfulofwords]

12.01.2015

It is a mistery to me, how empty my head has been for the past few days. For the past year really. I was once so full of ideas, so full of creative energy. I am not anymore. Everyday I sit between pictures I drew, hanging on my walls. I put them up there to remind me of the days I drew them on. To remind me of Paris and of Amsterdam, of my first flat and of my past best friend. Butreally, all they do is remind me of who I wasbut am no more. They remind me of ambition and raw desire to draw and write. I don't sit at the station on the cold floor for an hour anymore, because I had an idea and I am just too scared I will forget it before I come home. Of course that might not been healthy, and this is me romaticising again. But I feel a lot less healthy right now, than I did back then. I feel emptyand hopeless. I feel like all the colours drained out, and only the raw sketch remains. Two years ago, I wrote something on my wardrobe with erasabke marker. It was something I wrote and I liked it so much, I could recite it from memory because I reread it that often. It's still there on my wardrobe. Not because I still like it, but because I am to lazy to erase it. I can see the wardrobe, from my bed. I see itevery day. I see the words as if they were written in another language. I see lines, but not letters, I haven't read the words in quite a while. Lookimg at thimgs I draw nowadays feels the same. I see the lines, but they hold no meaning. Drawing allways seemed like explaining myself the great things in life. Mystery and life and love and fear and hope and pain and exploration of self. I had great conversations with myself inside these drawings. I still draw, but now it's mostly small talk.

[afistfulofwords]

11.01.15

I hate myself so much today.

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10.01.2015

[afistfulofwords]

09.01.2015

There is nothing I have to say today. In fact there is not much I feel today.

[afistfulofwords]

08.01.2015 Good things were happening in my life today, but bad things kept on happening in the world. So I have no words today, just a crappy picture

[afistfulofwords]

07.05.2015

Sitting in the train to my first day back at uni, I figured something out today. Thinking about something else, I suddenly found words to describe how i feel. I feel like there is a storm brewing somewhere in the uncertainty of tommorow. A big storm waiting to happen. My unability to see the future, to see myself in any kind of future is a testemony to that. This state of indecision, this humming silence I feel in my chest at all times, it's the famous "Ruhe vor dem Sturm". I am stuck in the Limbo between what things were and what they are gonna be. There is a storm coming, coming for me. But still I wonder, it would be wise to ru towards it. I don't know what the hange is gonna be, I don't know if it will be for the better or the worse. I just know it's gonna happen. No matter if I decide tomeet it halfway down the road, or hide out as long as I can. But once it's here, there aill be no shelter. Maybe I won't need one. Maybe this will be therai to refertilsthe land, to make it grow again. But maybe there will be no end to the flood. I am not allright how I am now, I kmow that. But I also know it is not as bad as I have been before. I realised all this today, and I hope the lines of words and metaphors will bring order into my mind. That the definition keeps its promise of orientation and sense. It did before in other matters. But of course, all those other matters never required me, to maybe get up for once and run towards the eye of the storm.

[afistfulofwords]

06.01.2015

I forgot again today That these hours, these moments Are connected to the rest of time That by choosing these moments I choose against so many others But I forgot again today And I guess that takes away the choice. I did not waste time today, I wasted possibilities. Without even thinkibg twice

[afistfulofwords]

04.01.2015 / 05.01.2015

Yesterday I had a lot of feelings and thoughts about a lot of things. But crashing on mx brothers coach I had no chance to write any of them down. So today, as I walked home in the dark, after yet another day of doing nothing, I saw the moon hanging above ghe city. Silver and full or at least full enough to see everything. It made me wonder how all my life I looked up at the moon, allways seeing the same side. I read a book once, where astronauts travel to the dark side of the moon and find there, hidden from us, a fertileland. A garden of sort. Well, in the story it all went to shit from there, for the sake of metaphors. But my metaphor is less political. The dark side of the moon, hidden from the eye. A spectacle of possibilities. Clearly science and space travel popped plenty of bubbles. But still. The dark side of the moon. I myself have no proof of anything back there. All my life I have been told it’s there. All my life I have been told there something there, and I have to trust in its existence. It’s only one promiseunder thousands of that kind. But some nights, when I look up to the moon, I wonder, what that something is. Is it a garden, or just dead rock, and the cold of space and endless emptyness? How I do I know what will come out of the promise, for me personally? There are a lot of things in life, people assure you are there, allthough you never saw them, or felt them, or experienced them. When it gets bad, they tell you, there are a lot of good things ou there, you just don’t know yet. But just because they found a garden in those things, doesn’t mean I won’t find rock. So whenit gets bad, the promise so easily seems empty. Maybe I need to make my own promise, maybe I need to make my own promise about the side I allready see. Because as I walked up to the moon, silver and maybe full or maybe not, I realised for the first. I heve been looking at this side all my life. But still, if I close my eyes, I still can’t remember the lines, the craters. I have been looking at this thing, ithout really looking at it. MaybeI should stop wo dering about the other side, being afraid of promises tur ing out empty. Maybe I should start by taking a closer look at, the side, I thought I allready knew.

[afistfulofwords]

03.01.15

There are thoughts you are not allowed to let in. Not for a second, not once. In december my siblings and I were all invited at my grandmas. It took a lot of planning to get all of us together. I didn't make it on time, and my sister called me while I was still in the bus. where I was she asked, and that they would start tea without me. I was only ten minutes late at that moment, and would only take te more until I was there, and allthough it is a silly thing, I really felt hurt. And the it came out of nowhere, a thought I may never get rid of again. They wouldn't miss me. I am the youngest of four children. Looking at my siblings I feel like I know why they are here. What they bring to our little pack. I can see looking at them, what would be missing from my life if I wouldn't have them in it. I can't say that with the same confidence about myself. I don't mean, they would not miss me if I died now. Of course they would. I ean they would be the same group of people, the same rounded constelation if I was never born. After all me being born, was not very likely to begin with. They would not miss me. I think sometimes to myself, when I see my sister talk to my brother. When I accedently started the same fight between her and our mother on christmas that brought her near a breakdown in fall. I am not here to complete this group, so instead I become a burden to them. Today my brother called me, to ask if I would like to come around for beer and pizza tomorrow. It took me a few moments to realize. It's his birthday tomorrow. I did not so much forget, as loose track of what day it is. After Christmas I had four different ideas what to get him for his birthday. I will show up on his doorstep empty handed tomorrow. I simply did not take carw of it. I did not take care of anything. I never took care of my siblings. There is no use for me in their lifes.and that's a thought I can never forget now.

[afistfulofwords]

02.01.2015

I hear a lot of people saying, that they couldn't wait to grow up when they were younger. And now that they are so called adults they regret that. I can make sense of that. Sure. But when I was younger I never wanted to grow up. I dreaded getting older more than anything else. I was terrified of it. Maybe it was all those books I read and movies I watched. Weither they were for children or people much older than me, they all had one thing in common. They glorofied youth and childhood. I was told that childhood is the most precious time of our live so often, that being a child meant no longer freedom to me. It became a responsibility. It's a sad sad paradox. I developed a strange sense of nostalgia, for things that were still happening. When nine year old me realised, that my favourite stuffed animal, did no longer hold the same significance for me, I cried for weeks and carried it with me everywhere. This is it, I thought, this is the loss of my innocence. This strange self awareness stayed with me later on. When I was a teenager, I never thought about the fun I could have doing something. I only thought about the story it could make. Needless to say, I was an unhappy teen. Because the anxiety ridden days I had, never lived up to the ideas I and all those books and movies had about being wild and young and rebellious. I wanted drinking and dancing and saying fuck you. I drank but I cannot dance and I am scared of confrontation. Those dreams I had they weren't me. So I hated who I was. The strange thing about those kind of habits is, that you can realize them, you can fully recognise their harmful nature, and still, never quite shake them. So I still wonder if this or that would makea great story, if it is worth my youth. Im utterly anable to picture a time after next monday, because I never thought about a future. I still feel not a single day over 19 because, I never thought about being older than that. Hell, 12 was my Maximum to be quite honest. Its 2015 now, I have been alive for 21 and half a year. And their are still no plans I can talk about at family functions. No dreams I dare to dream. I am an adult, I tell my self. I have a whole future in front of me. A whole life yet to come. But still I barely function. I did not make it out of bed today. I was to lazy to do work for uni, and to afraid of human contact to go down to the kitchen and eat. I am an adult. But that stuffed animal is still sitting on my bed. And next tuesday is still a haze. I am no adult. I am the ghost of a child.

[afistfulofwords]

Sylvester / 01.01.2015

I spend new years eve with a new friend I made this year, and a few of her friends. We had a nice and quiet sit in at her place. As the new year approached we went down to the river side to watch the city celebrate.

Although I had enjoyed them before, I never quite understood the purpose of fireworks at midnight. I finally got it. Suddenly it seemed right to me to begin the new year in a storm of light and noise like a thousand thunder claps. I watched a thousand fireworks race to the sky, from clouds of smoke and dust, like flare guns, signaling one thing. I am here. Its 20 fucking 15 and I am still here. I am still alive.

And a strange gladness took me over, and it felt right to joke and laugh with the others. It kept the quiet moments away.

Late at night, or early in the morning I finally made my way home from my friends place. We had talked for a while alone, while outside what we had thought to be smoke had turned into a thick fog. Still standing in the light and shelter of her door, i saw the fog move past me like a living thing. And for a moment I felt terrified to enter the strange and dangerous world of its belly. Outside the sparsely islands of orange light, the street lamps provided, I could not see further than arms length. But I could hear all the better for it. Footsteps and voices and explosions still now and then, coming from somewhere in that orange glow. It made it hard for me not to run the whole way.

I made it to the station, and for a while it was uncertain if my tram was still coming, or if I had to search my way through the fog all the way home. Maybe it was the fact that it was nearly four in the morning, and I was coming down from a rush of first endorphin and then adrenaline and three kinds of sugary alcohol, but even with the prospect of getting lost in the city I felt a strange sense of serenity. The world looked so strange now, so transformed by the change of date alone. All the rules were rewritten. As I stared into the fog, it would have not surprised all that much if instead of the train some monstrous creature had emerged from the cloud. It would not have been all that surprising to me if the end of the world was brewing there in the fog only arms length away from me. But as you may have noticed, the world did not end, and my tram was the only thing approaching.

More than an hour after I had entered the fog I was finally home. Sneaking in so my roommate and his girlfriend would not hear me, and i could avoid even the two sentences that we would exchange other wise. I realized that I had started the new year the way I had been spending the last. So so glad to be alive but with the feeling of certain impending doom and death in my heart. The image of the orange street lights painting the fog and the darkness into a strange glow, was still in my mind. It all looked exactly like I had imagined it, writing it down for a story three years ago. So even if I felt the same as the year before, just for a night , just for a long way home, the outside world had finally matched the strangeness and bizarre surrealism I feel on the inside.

Maybe that’s a sign for the next year. A promise. But I have not yet decided, if its for better or for worse. After all that scene in that story, was the beginning of the end of the world.